Third Unicorn, the new venture of BharatPe co-founder Ashneer Grover and his wife Madhuri Jain, is gearing up to foray into fantasy sports with a cricket-focused app called CrickPe, as it looks to tap into India's burgeoning real-money gaming industry and take on rivals such as Tiger Global-backed Dream11.
The move comes ahead of the marquee Indian Premier League (IPL) tournament which is set to begin from March 31, 2023. The tournament is typically crucial for fantasy sports platforms as they witness peak usage from players and also help in significant user acquisitions to grow their respective bases.
According to the company website, CrickPe is a fantasy sports app that will allow players to participate in public, private, or "mega contests" to earn cash prizes. They can create private groups to play with a limited group of friends as well as participate in contests with real cricketers. The platform will also offer free contests for people to practice and hone their skills.
Apart from this, CrickPe also appears to offer a feature that allows users to pay rewards to show love to their favourite cricketer.
Third Unicorn, through its directors Ashneer Grover and Madhuri Jain, has applied for three trademarks related to CrickPe: A "CrickPe" text-only trademark (wordmark) in December 2022 and two variations of CrickPe logos, one in January 2023 and another in February 2023. The applications are currently under process. Moneycontrol has viewed a copy of the trademark application.
That said, the CrickPe website appears to be still in the works at the time of writing this article.
The platform mentions it is powered by Third Unicorn and has an illustration of Grover. However, it currently has dummy placeholder information across the site including frequently asked questions (FAQs), and team information. The app download link is also not functional. This development was first reported by Entrackr. Jain did not respond to Moneycontrol's query seeking comment on this story.
Grover had incorporated Third Unicorn with his wife Madhuri Jain in July 2022, following an acrimonious exit from BharatPe. In January 2023, Chandigarh-based entrepreneur Aseem Ghavri disclosed that he is the third co-founder at the firm.
In the same month, Grover had stated in a LinkedIn post that the company would use only "desi/self-earned capital," and restrict its team size to a maximum of 50 employees.
India's gaming sector has seen unprecedented growth in terms of app downloads and revenue as a result of pandemic-induced home confinement in recent years, which has led to Indian consumers becoming more comfortable spending money on mobile games.
Revenue in the country's gaming sector increased from $2 billion in FY21 to $2.6 billion in FY22 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 27 percent to $8.6 billion in FY27, according to a report by gaming and interactive media venture fund Lumikai. Real-money games continue to be the largest revenue source for the industry, accounting for about 57 percent of the industry's FY22 revenues.
Dream11, the flagship brand of sports tech firm Dream Sports, currently dominates the country's fantasy sports segment with over 90 percent market share, according to industry estimates. The company claims to have over 160 million active users and was last valued at $8 billion in November 2021.
Other players in the fantasy sports segment include Sequoia-backed Mobile Premier League, Games24x7's My11Circle and Nazara Technologies-backed Halaplay.
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